Traitor to Rome
by Selective scifi junkie
Summary: The Volscians had attacked at dawn, in spite of the two parties that had been sent up to parley with them. The first had been sent running back, the second had come back assured that the Volscians would parley, rather than sack the city. It seemed the Volscians had lied. They were traitorous filth, like their leader. Caius Martius Coriolanus. Epilogue. More details within.
1. Chapter 1

**This fic requires substantial explanation:**

**Firstly, spoilers: Please do not read this if you are not familiar with the plot of Coriolanus. Also, please do not read this if you plan to see the Donmar Warehouse version of Coriolanus (ran 6/12/13 to 13/2/14). I will give away some very effective aspects of the staging.**

**Secondly, rating: I have rated this at a T because it is moderately graphic and quite dark, but if you can deal with the original play, you should be fine.**

**Thirdly, reasoning: I was lucky enough to see the Donmar production of Coriolanus at a livestream event. Images from it, particularly the final scene, stayed in my head for days. It was an unbelievably powerful performance. This fic began at the end and grew backwards. It is set the day after the final scene of the play.**

**This fic exists in my head as a one shot, but feels too long to post in a single chapter, so I have split it. Please read as if it were a single chapter.**

Quintus Patricius ducked, raising his shield, and felt the Volscian's club smash in to the top of it, saw the hammered metal bend under the force. That could easily have been his helmet, then his head beneath. He shouted with effort and stabbed his gladium forwards in to the barbarian's unarmoured stomach. The frenzied man bellowed and fell away, clutching at himself. Even less than five pedes away, Quintus barely heard him. There was screaming all around, metal scraping metal, Volscian battle cries, Roman shouted orders, Romans shouting with effort, Volscian death cries, Roman death cries.

The Volscians had attacked at dawn, in spite of the two parties that had been sent up to parley with them. The first had been sent running back, in fear for their lives, the second had come back almost weeping with relief, three women and a boy, assured that the Volscians would parley, rather than sack the city. It seemed the Volscians had lied. They were traitorous filth, like their leader. A Roman, a Roman general at that, decorated, offered Consul, then turned traitor, fled to foes he'd been among like a wolf among lambs weeks before. Caius Martius Coriolanus.

The Volscians had been sighted less than two Gallica Legua from the walls, running down in a horde, no ranks, nothing. Like any other Barbarian horde. The Generals, like everyone else in the city, had been terrified. The legions had been scrambled, faster than they ever had been in training, and set behind the gate, waiting. The numbers were hopelessly against them. The Volscians had them three to one from what they could see. And it wasn't just numbers. They had Caius Martius Coriolanus in their camp. He was a commander of legend. The orders had been to stand in across the inside of the gates and stay there until they died, the Legionaries or the Volscians. They were not to move. They were not to fall back, they were not to pursue. Deploying brilliant tactics against a force jammed against walls on both sides and forbidden to move was difficult, nearly impossible. The Generals thought Coriolanus would out-command them, as well as outnumber and surprise. That was terrifying. Quitus had been with the legions four years now. Their pride was in their tactics as well as their discipline. General Cominus had said at the outset that they would need every drop of favour Mars could endow to survive to sundown, let alone win. They fought to make the Volscians bleed, spite them before the inevitable slaughter.

Quintus shoved his shield forwards again. The effort of holding it up was almost too much now. His sword hand was slick with blood. He would die here, like everyone else in Rome. They were all going to die, and all for Coriolanus's treachery. His shield hit resistance, a Volscian's body. He stabbed round quickly, hoping, but found no flesh there. The Legionaire beside him screamed in agony and twisted backwards, falling, blood gushing from a severed hand. Another man stepped up to fill his place at once.

Something was changing. The shield bashes were meeting flesh less frequently, the gap between their bodies and the enemy was growing. They were hanging back. That made them more dangerous. Coriolanus had tipped them off. But no. Quintus shoved forwards three times in quick succession, stepping up to follow. Still no flesh met his shield. Three more shoves.

"Quintus, get your stupid rump back here!" That was Varrus, his Decanus. "We're not to follow!" Quintus looked around. A gap of five Passa had opened up between the Volscians and the Legions. And it was growing. Quintus scrambled backwards. His feet slipped on a corpse's limp arm. To stand forward was to invite death. Every legionnaire knew that. The Volscians weren't hanging back, they were falling back. They were routing, or they seemed to be. General Cominus had said they should assume no cunning to be beyond the Volscians now. They had Caius Martius Coriolanus on their side.

"That's it, run, you barbarian dogs!" Someone bellowed. No one took up the cry. No one wanted anything more than for the Volscians to fall back, even for a few minutes. The rout was spreading slowly backwards through their warriors, like a good feigned rout should.

"Stand lads." A Centurion called. "Steady now." Quintus rested the bottom of his shield on the blood soaked ground, gasping for breath, muttering a prayer to Mars. He might only have a moment's respite. As soon as the Volscian commander realised that the feigned rout had failed, he'd call it off, or he would if he was any good, he would if he was Caius Martius Coriolanus.

"Throw spears!" The Centurion called. Maybe twenty spears flew in to the backs of the Volscians. Most had already been thrown.

They waited. They waited in terrified silence as the Volscians spilled back out of the gates, over their own dead and Roman dead together.

"They'll be back." Varrus growled. Quintus nodded. He hadn't been at the siege of Corioles, the last fight Coriolanus had led on their side, but he'd heard of the man scaling the walls alone and emerging hours later, running red with blood like a creature out of the underworld, to lead the Legions to victory. No man had ever seen him flinch from his wounds. Would he do it again here? Scale the walls alone before a fleeing army, then return, bathed in Roman blood, to lead the Volscians back in for the slaughter?

Quintus had no idea how long he waited, as though for the headsman's blade. When the thunder of his heart had slowed and his breath was easy again, he heard General Cominus saying

"Get fifty equites up here. I won't suffer to wait blindly." By the time the equites rode out, some Legionaires were squatting on the bloody ground, they'd been on their feet too long. The Decani were only making the faintest show of an effort to get them up again, some were sitting with what was left of their men, calling them back in to their tent-parties. Varrus waved and whistled for his, as he usually did. Quintus walked over, seeing Flavius and Matellus do the same from the other direction. Varrus looked between them slowly.

"Is this all that's left of us?" Matellus nodded grimly.

"I think so. Blasius is dead. Had his head caved in, early on."

"So's Plinius." Flavius added.

"Martinus?" Varrus asked. "Iulius? I saw Gnaeus go down, but… There were nine of us when this started. Are we four all that's left?"

"Iulius took a bad wound. He got pulled back." Quintus offered. "Martinus… I don't know." Varrus sighed heavily.

"More than half of us, in less than a day."

"They're coming back!" Someone on the wall shouted. Half the Legionnaires had jumped back to their tired feet before the man finished speaking. "The equites. The equites are coming back. No one following them."

"Up lads. We don't know they're our men yet." General Cominus shouted. "Repel horsemen. Quickly now. Anyone who's still got a spear to the fore." They staggered in to formation, Quintus wanted to do nothing less than start fighting again, even the miserable task of disposing of the dead would have been better.

"General, they're ours!" The man on the wall shouted. "They're Romans."

"How can you be sure?"

"Roman armour sir, to a man." The scout was right. The horsemen pulled their mounts up sharply as soon as they saw the shield wall.

"Report!" General Cominus commanded.

"The Volscians are breaking camp, Sir." One of the equites shouted back. "They're about to run by the look of it." Every soldier in the depleted, battered army at the gate sighed with relief. Quintus silently resolved to find a gander somewhere to sacrifice to Mars as soon as he could.

"First, third and fourth cohorts, form up outside the walls." General Cominus ordered. Quintus cursed under his breath. He'd thought it was over. General Cominus was going to drag them in to the Volscian camp.

"C'mon lads." Varrus whispered. "There might be something in the camp worth finding."

"Foremost," General Cominus called, pacing his horse up and down before the assembled men a couple of minutes later, "I must congratulate all of you. You fought like sons of Mars, to a man. You know I did not believe we could survive this onslaught. It seems I and the Volscians underestimated our Roman gall, our bravery. Now we must show the Volscians that we will not tolerate being attacked so. We march in to their camp and make free with whatever we find. Everything there belongs to Rome. Gather any supplies you find, we will eat well tonight. Every living man, make him a prisoner or slay him if he will not yield. I leave that to your judgement, barring one. There is one man I charge you to bring back alive. If any one of you lays eyes on Caius Martius Coriolanus, I charge you to call out his name, any who hear that cry, run to the aid of the caller. I do not need to tell you what that man, if indeed we can call him a man, has done. He has turned his back on Rome, his shelter and his nurse, and run to the embrace of the Volscians, forsaking his oath, his family, his friends. He would have given us over to Barbarian swords, every man, woman and child in Rome, for all that Rome honoured him. He is a faithless snake. He will be tried as a traitor and executed before the eyes of the people he betrayed. He must not escape. March on."

**Reviews will be much appreciated, since I haven't written anything like this before.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Thank you for carrying on.**

They marched. Finding the Volscian camp was not difficult, every man in it had come swarming down to the gates of Rome hours before, making no effort to hide their tracks. The Volscians saw them coming maybe two stadia away. Some men were trying to rally what was left of the force, gathering them in to groups, but everywhere Volscians were breaking rank, they were running. Quintus could hear the Volscian leaders bellowing at their men to stand, but to little or no avail. General Cominus laughed coldly.

"Form up lads, staggered blocks, equites on the right flank. The winds are with us this time. Show them how Romans fight best." Quintus stepped back in to formation. He wasn't afraid this time. He'd been fighting in blind terror all day, but not this time. The Volscians could not stand this time. "Forward march." General Cominus barked.

By the time they reached the outskirts of the collapsing camp, almost every single Volscian had run like the beasts they were.

"Search in your Tent parties." General Cominus shouted. "Not alone. And remember; Bring Caius Martius Coriolanus back alive." Varrus whistled at what remained of his men and led them off.

"Not so brave now, are they?" Matellus muttered. Quintus grinned. Varrus pointed them at the entrance to one of the tents that was still standing. They formed up and breached the doorway.

There wasn't much to salvage, as it turned out. The tents had been stripped of anything valuable, and Quintus privately doubted the Volscians had had much anyway. Once or twice they ran in to a knot of Volscians who'd decided to fight to the death where they stood, rather than flee and be run down by the equites. They weren't difficult to dispatch either way. As they penetrated further in to the camp, they began to see farm buildings; pillaged grain sheds, cattle housing, a pigsty. A great, ancient looking barn stood before them. Varrus pointed to it and the four of them formed to a solid line, protecting each other. It looked a likely bolthole for what was left of the Volscian army to Quintus, but they'd been easy to kill so far.

"Ready?" Varrus breathed.

"Ready." The rest of them hissed back. They threw their shields, and the full weight of their bodies behind them, against the doors. They weren't barred. The four men staggered forwards in to the gloom.

"Urgh." Flavius raised his shield for a moment, as though to hold his nose. The building stank of blood and death. They could not see a thing inside it. None of them dared move until their eyes had adjusted. "What died in here?" Volscian standards hung on poles here and there, a solid wooden table lay before them. Something else, more substantial than a standard, hung in the middle of the barn, suspended a pes or two above the ground. They crept forwards, eyes still adjusting to the darkness. The thing hanging in the middle of the room was suspended by a chain slung over a beam in the roof.

"That did." Quintus said, gesturing at it. "It's got limbs and a trunk. It's a body of some sort."

"A sacrifice?" Matellus asked.

"No. Not any sort of sacrifice we'd make anyway." Varrus said, disgust colouring his voice. "It's a man, a man hanging by his feet. No beast's forelegs hang like that." Varrus took a deep breath, broke the line and paced forwards to the body, stopping maybe three pes back and crouching down to look at the corpse's head. "Volscian armour, covered in bl- Pluto's…" Varrus didn't even finish the curse. "Someone else look at this, tell me I'm not going mad." Quintus stepped forward, wondering what on earth he was about to see. Varrus turned the body so its sightless eyes were turned on Quintus. He just stared at it, slack jawed, disbelieving. "Caius Martius Coriolanus." Varrus said, looking up at Quintus. "Isn't he?" Quintus nodded. The corpse's throat was slit, from ear to ear, gaping wide. Blood had clotted over his jaw, run down his face in places. His mouth was part open, eyes not quite closed.

"They sacrificed him?" Matellus asked.

"Why would you?" Varrus asked. "That'd be like killing your best bull at the start of summer. He's a General of legend. He shattered them at Corioles, we thought he'd shatter us at Rome. He's valuable, far too valuable to kill out of hand."

"They killed him for failing then?" Quintus suggested. "His attack didn't work, they didn't break through our ranks, so they killed him." Varrus shook his head again.

"He's cold as stone and stiff as it too. He's been dead all day at least, and all this blood's dry. He was dead when the attack started."

"That's a nonsense then." Matellus said. " They didn't sacrifice him, they didn't kill him for failing, but he's dead."

"Suicide?" Quintus offered.

"How in Pluto would you cut your own throat hanging by your feet?" Flavius asked. "If you were trying to kill yourself and you had a knife, you wouldn't bother hanging yourself up like that?"

"Maybe they hung him up after he'd done it." Quintus suggested. Varrus shook his head.

"He died here, look at the blood. It must be all that he had in him, or nearly. And he stiffened hanging like this." He prodded Caius Martius Coriolanus in the armpit. He swung rigidly for a moment.

"My mother used to kill chickens that way." Flavius said quietly. "Hang them by their feet, get one of us to hold the head still and cut the neck. Gets all the blood out of the meat." Quintus felt himself pale slightly. He was a Legionnaire of Rome. His stomach would not be turned by blood. But there was something about a man being killed like a bird, even a man like Caius Martius Coriolanus, the traitorous beast who'd tried to sell Rome to Barbarians. Even the man who'd scaled the walls of Corioles alone, broken through their garrison, come back running with Volscian blood and been hailed as a hero. No one spoke for a minute.

"We should get General Cominus." Varrus broke the silence. "Matellus, Flavius, go. Quintus, stay here with me." Matellus and Flavius hurried off, leaving Quintus and Varrus in silence. Quintus felt himself trying to look anywhere but at the rigid, bloodless corpse.

"What do you think happened then?" He asked Varrus when he could bear it no longer. Varrus shook his head, standing up again.

"I don't know. I don't know that we'll ever know what happened here. It'd be a fine tale if we knew it, Caius Martius never seemed to do anything without giving people a tale to tell."

"Who do you think killed him?"

"Volscians. There's no doubt of that. If we'd sent someone to do it, they'd have told us. I'd have been less scared in that fight for knowing Caius Martius was dead."

"Why would they have killed him? You said yourself he was too valuable." Varrus shook his head again.

"I don't know."

A shadow passed the door. Quintus and Varrus snapped to attention. General Cominus was striding towards them, breathing hard.

"Is this him?"

"Yessir." Varrus said. General Cominus grabbed Caius Martius Coriolanus by the hip and turned him so his face was towards the light, and the gaping hole in his neck beneath. He crouched and lifted the body's face towards his own, staring in to the lifeless eyes.

"Caius Martius." He breathed. "And see what's become of you." He released Caius Martius Coriolanus's head and straightened. "He's been dead a fair while."

"Yessir." Varrus agreed. "Since before the attack began. We think it must have been the Volscians that-" General Cominus held up a hand to silence Varrus.

"What does it matter who dealt the blow? He lived a traitor and he died a traitor's death. Let him down." The four Legionnaires looked around for what the chain could be attached to. Matellus got there first; a hook in the wall, a scythe still hanging from it. He pulled the chain free and lowered the rigid body to the floor. General Cominus stood looking at the body for a long moment. "Caius Martius Coriolanus." He said eventually, his voice low and shaking. "The four of you go and find something to make a litter to bear him back to Rome. You'll be rewarded for finding the traitor." Quintus followed Varrus out, leaving General Cominus alone with the body of Caius Martius Coriolanus.

The General pulled his plumed helmet from his head and tucked it under his arm. He sighed heavily and knelt down beside the body. He grasped it by the shoulder and rolled it on to its back. He reached to try and close the eyes, but the stiffness of death had taken even those.

"Oh Caius." The General breathed. "Traitor, hero, General, you might have been a Consul. What happened to you? They'll leave you to be spat at like a murderer in the square. What will I say to your mother? Mars protect me, I fear her wrath more than that of most Volscians. Oh Juna, Caius, your family. Rome won't be kind to them now. You loved them. I know you did. But you can't shelter them now. They'll be killed; Volumnia, Virgilia, your boy…" The General sighed again and lifted a hand to his eyes. "I'll guard the boy. I can take him in among mine. They'll forget he was ever yours soon enough. I don't know what I can do for the women." The General drew a short, gasping breath. "Why did you do it, Caius? You're a traitor now, you'll be sport for crows by sundown. I can do nothing for you. I can't even leave you here to rot, you wouldn't be further shamed at least, but I have my orders, as we soldiers always do. We are never our own men. You saved my life and my name more times than I can remember. I doubt I'll see another soldier like you in my lifetime. And I must call you a traitor now until the end of my days." The General rose and stood silently over the body for a long moment. "For the last time then." He stood to attention. "Caius Martius Coriolanus. General and Hero of Rome."


End file.
